Trenton Redux

"Redux" (v.i.): To Bring Back

Trenton was once a regional and world manufacturing center, not simply the capital of New Jersey.

In recent years, it has been seen as the anti-center: the dumping ground for people left out of the boom in the surrounding Mercer and Bucks counties.

But underneath the surface, something quite remarkable has been going on. People have been returning. People turning away from the sterile anonymity of the suburbs. People who choose to live here: looking for a sense of place, a community, a neighborhood such as their parents grew up in, yet they feared was lost forever.

Trenton is coming back.

Blessedly, the cornfields in Plainsboro and West Windsor can't be cut up anymore. The few that remain are increasingly shielded from development as "open space". So the relentless logic of population growth dictates that further development must become more concentrated. Despite itself, after 40 years of neglect, New Jersey is rediscovering the advantages of the city center.

This blog will be about this journey. It is told from a particular perspective as someone who has chosen this route personally (I moved to Trenton from Princeton 3 years ago), and who even more recently has decided to bet his career on it (I'm now a partner in a real estate development company focused on Trenton development).

posted by Michael @ 9:33 AM